


Symbiosis

by Nympha_Alba



Category: Only Yesterday, おもひでぽろぽろ | Only Yesterday (1991)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Romance, Where are they now?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nympha_Alba/pseuds/Nympha_Alba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the train takes me further away from Toshio, from the farm, the fields and the hayrides, the cucumbers cooling in a basket in the stream, I grow numb and cold inside despite the heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Symbiosis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skyshores](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyshores/gifts).



> Dear skyshores,  
> You said you'd like a "where are they now" story, so that is what I tried to write, and I hope there is at least some bucolic scenery as well.  
> Happy Yuletide!

TWENTY-SEVEN

 

I don't want to leave. 

When the train slowly leaves the station and gains speed, I feel as if I left my life back there on the platform, in the hot sun.

As the train takes me further and further away from Toshio, from the farm, the fields and the hayrides, the cucumbers cooling in a basket in the stream, I grow numb and cold inside despite the heat.

Along with my thundering heart, the wheels on the rails are saying: turn back, turn back, turn back. I sit staring out at the landscape moving past, but I don't really see it. The 5th-grade Taeko refuses to leave me alone. When she appears beside me with a reproachful look on her face as if to say "aren't you going to _do_ something?", I close my eyes. The thought of Tokyo is unbearable. The crowded streets and noisy traffic, my tiny flat and the offices with their clunky grey computers and copiers – that's not where my life is. My reality is back there at the farm, where sun, wind and rain dictate the day's work, where things grow, change, blossom, and reward your hard work with their fruit.

When my ten-year-old self blinks up at me, eyebrows raised, I recall that baseball match again, the one where I bolted before Hirota had a chance to talk to me. I realise I'm doing it all over again: I'm bolting. But it doesn't have to be like this, not now. Everything is different. I can shape my own life.

As the train slows down for the next station I shoot up from my seat and grab my suitcase, and the moment the train stops, I hop off. Quickly, before I can change my mind or think too much, I find a payphone and call the farm. 

Then I sit in the shade waiting to get back to where my heart is, where I want my life to be, where I hope my future lies. I keep my feet together and my hands in my lap as I close my eyes and listen to the heat, audible in the music of the crickets and the quality of the announcements over the speakers. The heat distorts the sound and makes it wobble, like an auditory heat haze. I refuse to think of anything, not the consequences of what I have done, not what I am about to do. All of that will catch up with me later anyway.

On the way back I sit looking out of the window, still refusing to think, but my hands are trembling with nerves. The 5th grade me leans over my shoulder, nodding encouragement, and waits with me in the sun for Toshio.

When I see him park the car and come running towards me, my heart skips in my chest. I have done the right thing. I know that with all my being.

He doesn't tease me for coming back, in fact he doesn't say much at all except that he is glad I decided not to go to Tokyo after all. We drive in silence and I think about when he picked me up from the train station two weeks ago – the proximity of our bodies in the tiny car, the smell of recent rain, the magical ride as dawn broke and the music played. Perhaps Toshio is thinking about that, too, because he turns his head and smiles.

Back at the farm I am welcomed warmly but with a minimum of fuss, as if they discussed this before we arrived and agreed to give me space. I work in the fields with Toshio all afternoon, weeding and getting another tractor driving lesson, and it's not until after the evening meal that he asks me to go for a walk with him. I nod and swallow. The moment of truth has arrived.

The moon is waning but still bright in the sky, giving enough light for us to see the road clearly. We walk side by side, glancing at each other now and then and pretending we didn't see each other doing it. My nerves sing with tension but it's not unpleasant, not negative, more the thrum of anticipation. When we reach the bridge where Toshio found me in the rain, we stop. The stream is a ribbon of moon-glitter through the darkness, a frog croaks somewhere and a bird flies up from the trees, startled by our presence. We stand by the railing shoulder by shoulder in silence until Toshio inhales and turns to me.

"I hope you didn't come back only for the tractor, or for the tomatoes and apples."

He sounds nervous, which makes me less so, and I smile up at him. "Perhaps not _only_ for them."

I made the right choice, my pulse whispers. I love, I love, I love, my heart sings.

Toshio reaches out for my hands with both his and takes a step closer. "I knew right from the first moment that you were - that I was - that I would love you."

A warm shudder runs through me, head to toe. "I suppose there's nothing like having a woman mistake you for a thief," I say gravely.

He laughs. "Well, from there it can only get better!"

"Perhaps I didn't know from the _very_ first moment," I continue, "but I'd never have guessed I could fall in love so completely in only two weeks."

The look in Toshio's eyes sends another warm little frisson down my spine.

"I'm glad it wasn't only the tractor you liked," he says, and kisses me.

Then he does it again, and a third time, and by the time we let go of each other we are both panting.

"We're going to be great together," he says, his voice not quite steady. "You will marry me, Taeko, I hope?"

"Of course I will!"

The kiss this time is less frantic but lasts longer. When it ends, Toshio leans his forehead against mine and murmurs: "There's only one thing that worries me."

I don't want anything in our future lives together to worry him. "What?"

"I'm afraid you're going to be bored. What will you do in winter? There's not much to do around here."

"Well," I say and grin up at him, "then we'll just have to change that."

*

A few days later we drive back towards Mount Zao, stopping at the viewpoint to look out over the valley. The sun is beating down and I feel a mist of sweat at the back of my neck.

"This is what ultimately made me want to stay," I say, gesturing towards the fields, the woods, the canal floating lazily between its banks. "Man and nature, working together. That - and you."

"Symbiosis," Toshio states, his eyes shaded by the peak of his cap.

"Yes," I say, taking in the beauty of the scenery. "Symbiosis." 

 

THIRTY-SEVEN 

 

Old-fashioned as it is, we still pick safflower every summer. When I was expecting our second child I was too heavy and too dizzy to take part, and oh, how I missed it! Ten years on, it's lost none of its appeal. The work is hard on your hands, back and feet, but those early mornings more than make up for it. The beauty of fields and forest-clad hills, wet and misty after recent rains; butterflies and bees, and those tiny frogs leaping in terror as you approach… And the sunrise. The sunrise is a piece of magic repeated every morning.

We've made it a tradition to take a photograph of our bright red palms after handling the fermented safflower petals, and every year, we laugh as we hold our hands up to the camera. Strange how some things never get old.

Midori, our youngest, insisted on "helping" with the safflower this year – of course she has been present for every harvest ever since she was born, but this year she was adamant about helping _for real_. (She is four, and very determined about most things.) In the photo, everyone is laughing except her – with her red palms and her scowl she looks like a tiny, fierce warrior. 

Safflower season is the anniversary of when we met, Toshio and I. The children have heard it many times by now, the story of how Toshio met me at the train station and I mistook him for a thief, out to steal my luggage. It makes them laugh every time – the idea that I would think Dad was a thief! How could I not know that Dad was Dad? To be honest, I tell them, I don't understand that myself, but it didn't take me long to find out.

" _You_ knew, though, didn't you, Dad?" they ask Toshio. "You knew that Mum was Mum."

"Oh, yes," Toshio says and grins at them. "I knew that the moment I saw her.

I love every second of my life here, working hard in the fields, watching my children grow, watching the circle of life. I even love the snowy winters, the contrast between their white silence and the lush, steaming green summers. 

I've opened a small shop here at the farm, where I sell safflower-dyed things – t-shirts, sundresses, tablecloths, handkerchiefs – as well as pretty ceramic bowls and jugs from a nearby pottery. The interest in safflower has grown and our visitors sometimes travel quite some distance. I'm pleased to see people getting more interested in organic farming as well, and next year we'll be taking in paying guests for the safflower picking. We'll have some extra money and a few extra pairs of hands; it will be good for the farm.

Toshio's fears that I would be bored have not come true. For how could I possibly be bored with gold-lined clouds, cherry trees bright with fruit, or bridges crossing lazy streams? How could I possibly be bored with two beautiful sons and a tiny warrior daughter, and a husband who calms me when I need it, encourages me when _that_ is what I need, and above all, loves me no matter what?

The ten-year-old me is still present, but stays quietly in the background. She looks pleased. I believe she knows her grown-up self made the right choice.

 

FORTY-SEVEN

 

Tonight's performance was a success, even more than the three before it. I'm exhausted as I remove the stage make-up and change my clothes, but the exhilaration more than makes up for it.

There are still a few people waiting outside as I exit through the stage door and walk around the corner. Scattered over the sidewalk in the mild spring evening, they talk and laugh, and I spot Toshio a little further away. He is talking to old Mrs Takahashi, and as I get nearer, I hear her say:

"And your wife is the best actress of them all, but of course you knew that already."

The pride in Toshio's eyes and voice makes my heart soft and my eyes damp. 

"Yes," he says softly, "I do know that." 

His face brightens when he sees me, and Mrs Takahashi thanks me for the performance and the work I do at the theatre. I wave it aside; I don't regard it as work. For me, it's all pleasure.

"The kids went home with their granddad, so it's just you and me," Toshio says to me when she's left.

"Were they embarrassed to be associated with me?"

He laughs. "They weren't. The boys got past the embarrassment stage long ago and Midori was never in it, at least not about your theatre stuff."

It's true, what he says. While our sons have gone through various degrees of embarrassment over their mother being involved in the local theatre, running the Drama Society and occasionally taking the stage herself, Midori never has. She loves the theatre as much as I do, if not more, and cheers me on all the way. I wouldn't be surprised if she decides to try acting as a career in a few years – at which point, of course, I will cheer _her_ on all the way.

Toshio drives us through quiet streets, out of the village and into the countryside, onto the road along the rice paddies. In the darkness of the car, just as he changes gear, he glances at me and asks: "Do you ever regret it, Taeko? Moving here. Marrying me, living in the country."

In the early days, just after we were married, he did ask me that a few times, but it must be twenty years since I last had that question. I can't help wondering what brought this on, tonight of all nights. He can sense my confusion, because he adds: "Back at the theatre… when Mrs Takahashi said you were the best actress of the lot, she was right. You're good. If you had stayed in Tokyo, you could have had other things, better things, much greater than this. You could have been on a big stage somewhere. Read the reviews in the morning papers. Seen your name in lights."

I look at his profile, lit from below by the dashboard and faintly by the moon, and I know I must make sure once and for all that he knows this is _right_ ; this was my choice then and would still be today. This is where I want to be.

"Please stop the car."

He does as I ask, calmly and unquestioningly the way he always does, and this is only one of the million things I love him for. There is nowhere to pull over so he just parks the car right there in the road. We get out and stand looking at each other in the moonlight, in the semi-darkness that is full of small rustling noises.

I go up to him and slide my arms around his neck, and he smiles as he pulls me to him.

"Not once," I say, "have I missed Tokyo. Just look around. Do you think I would ever exchange all this for my tiny, boxy flat or my grey office? Do you think I would ever regret coming back to stay, or that I would regret you, or the children? This is where my life is. Being an actress in Tokyo was only a child's dream, completely unrealistic because I didn't understand what was involved. There would have been too much competition, too much need for sharp elbows and hard edges and thick skin. It's not me, Toshio. It would have been stressful and I'd have been unhappy. No, I'd much rather be here, where my theatre work means something to other people beside myself."

Toshio smiles down at me. I can see that my reply made him happy, and I feel it in his kiss, too. We stand in the moonlight kissing like teenagers in love – which is how I feel with him most of the time.

"Symbiosis?" he murmurs, holding me tightly.

He remembers.

I turn my head to look at the narrow road along the rice paddies, the moonlight reflected in the water, the perfect symmetry of the young plants.

"Truly," I say.

And just as an owl makes one single, sleepy hoot at the edge of the forest, I kiss him again.


End file.
